The gadget, called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, is made by South Pasadena-based Cogent Systems and is about the size of a small cell phone, said West Covina police Sgt. Bob Tolich.

It allows officers to check people's fingerprints within minutes while in the field, without bringing them back to the police station, said Tolich.

West Covina police have had the devices on hand since November of last year, but the system was just installed and tested for the first time Monday, West Covina police Network Administrator Michael Shapiro said.

The "investigative tool" is expected to save time and manpower for the police department, as officers will no longer have to physically bring people to the station just to to positively identify them through fingerprints, Tolich said.

Additionally, "There are very stringent restrictions on who we can bring in (to fingerprint)," Tolich said. The new system allows officers to check fingerprints during "consensual encounters," he said.

"I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of identifications and arrests because of these things," Tolich said.

In order to obtain fingerprints and check them against a county-wide database, all an officer has to do is have the person being identified touch both index fingers to a small square on the device, officials said.

The machine connects the patrol car's on-board computer via Bluetooth technology, which then runs the fingerprints for identification and arrest history, Tolich said.

The new machine also returns results in about two to three minutes, Tolich said - much faster than the current fingerprint machine housed inside the station, which can take half an hour to an hour to return results.

Officers, therefore, can spend more time on patrol and less time taking fingerprints, Tolich said. "The more officers we can field, the better off the community is," he said.

The device currently only checks the scanned fingerprints against a county database, Tolich said, but he said he's optimistic the system will be expanded to include state and federal databases in the coming months and years.

The new system does not replace the current system of fingerprinting, called Live Scan, Shaprio said, "It works in conjunction with it." The older, more cumbersome system still provides more complete information, since it is currently capable of searching state and federal databases.

"This is very sensitive-type private info," Shapiro said, which is why, "there's tons of security built into (the system)."

Each machine only works with a single police car, Shapiro said. "You couldn't hook it up to a home computer."

The station currently has 6 of the machines, which were purchased with a grant from the Rand Corporation through the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Tolich said. In the next three months, police hope to have all 43 patrol cars in the West Covina police fleet equipped with the device, he said.

The sheriff's department was given 500 of the devices by the corporation to hand out to sheriff's stations and police department throughout the county.

West Covina is one of the first local agencies to have the system operational, Tolich said.